Brookwood High School science teacher Carrie Settles Livers’ classroom doubles as a kind of lab.

To someone unfamiliar with aquaponics, it would take a while to actually figure out what function the contraption in the back of her classroom serves. There are a couple of shelves with plants underneath lamps. Two 480-gallon fish tanks with about a dozen goldfish swimming inside are connected to two 4-by-16-foot water beds by PVC pipes.